5

THE NEW CUSTOMER PATH

Aware, Appeal, Ask, Act, and Advocate
With increased mobility and connectivity, customers already have limited
time to consider and evaluate brands. As the pace of life accelerates and their
attention span drops, customers experience difficulty in focusing. But across
multiple channels—online and offline—customers continue to be exposed to
too much of everything: product features, brand promises, and sales talk.
Confused by too-good-to-be-true advertising messages, customers often
ignore them and instead turn to trustworthy sources of advice: their social
circle of friends and family.
Companies need to realize that more touchpoints and higher volume in
messages do not necessarily translate into increased influence. Companies
need to stand out from the crowd and meaningfully connect with customers
in just a few critical touchpoints. In fact, just one moment of unexpected
delight from a brand is all it takes to transform a customer into the brand's
loyal advocate. To be able to do so, companies should map the customer path
to purchase, understand customer touchpoints across the path, and intervene
in select touchpoints that matter. They should focus their efforts—
intensifying communications, strengthening channel presence, and improving
customer interface—to improve those critical touchpoints as well as to
introduce strong differentiation.
Moreover, companies need to leverage the power of customer connectivity
and advocacy. Nowadays, peer-to-peer conversation among customers is the
most effective form of media. Given this lack of trust, companies might no
longer have direct access to target customers. As customers trust their peers
more than ever, the best source of influence is the army of customers turned
advocates. Thus, the ultimate goal is to delight customers and convert them
into loyal advocates.
Understanding How People Buy: From Four A's to Five A's
One of the earliest and widely used frameworks to describe the customer path
is AIDA: attention, interest, desire, and action. Unsurprisingly, AIDA was
coined by an advertising and sales pioneer, E. St. Elmo Lewis, and was first
adopted in the fields of advertising and sales. It serves as a simple checklist
or a reminder for advertising executives when they design advertisements and
for sales executives when they approach prospects. The advertising copy and
sales pitch should grab attention, initiate interest, strengthen desire, and
ultimately drive action. Similar to the four P's of marketing (product, price,
place, and promotion), AIDA has undergone several expansions and
modifications.
Derek Rucker of the Kellogg School of Management offers a modification of
AIDA that he calls the four A's: aware, attitude, act, and act again. In this
more recent framework, the interest and desire stages are simplified into
attitude and a new stage, act again, is added. The modified framework aims
to track post-purchase customer behavior and measure customer retention. It
considers an action of repurchase as a strong proxy for customer loyalty.
The four A's framework is a simple model to describe the straightforward
funnel-like process that customers go through when evaluating brands in their
consideration sets. Customers learn about a brand (aware), like or dislike the
brand (attitude), decide whether to purchase it (act), and decide whether the
brand is worth a repeat purchase (act again). When it is treated as a customer
funnel, the number of customers going through the process continues to
decline as they move into the next stage. People who like the brand must
have known the brand before. People who purchase the brand must have
liked the brand before. And so on. Similarly, when treated as a brand funnel,
the number of brands that are being considered along the path continues to
decline. For example, the number of brands people recommend is less than
the number of brands people buy, which in turn is less than the number of
brands people know.
The four A's also reflects a primarily personal path. The major influence on
customers' decision making as they move across the path comes from
companies' touchpoints (e.g., TV advertising at the aware phase, salesperson
at the act phase, service center at the act again phase). This is within a
company's control.
Today, in the era of connectivity, the straightforward and personal funnel-like
process of the four A's needs an update. A new customer path must be
defined to accommodate changes shaped by connectivity.
In the pre-connectivity era, an individual customer determined his or her
own attitude toward a brand. In the connectivity era, the initial appeal of
a brand is influenced by the community surrounding the customer to
determine the final attitude. Many seemingly personal decisions are
essentially social decisions. The new customer path should reflect the rise
of such social influence.
In the pre-connectivity era, loyalty was often defined as retention and
repurchase. In the connectivity era, loyalty is ultimately defined as the
willingness to advocate a brand. A customer might not need to
continuously repurchase a particular brand (e.g., due to a longer purchase
cycle) or might not be able to (e.g., due to unavailability in certain
locations). But if the customer is happy with the brand, he or she will be
willing to recommend it even when currently not using it. The new
customer path should be aligned to this new definition of loyalty.
When it comes to understanding brands, customers now actively connect
with one another, building ask-and-advocate relationships. Netizens, in
particular, have very active connections in customer forums. Customers
who need more information will search for it and connect with other
customers with better knowledge and more experience. Depending on the
bias shown during the conversation, the connection either strengthens or
weakens the brand's initial appeal. The new customer path should also
recognize this connectivity among customers.
Based on these requirements, the customer path should be rewritten as the
five A's: aware, appeal, ask, act, and advocate. (See Figure 5.1.)
 Figure 5.1 The Shifting Customer Path in a Connected World
In the aware phase, customers are passively exposed to a long list of brands
from past experience, marketing communications, and/or the advocacy of
others. This is the gateway to the entire customer path. A customer who has
previous experience with a brand will likely be able to recall and recognize
the brand. Advertising driven by companies and word of mouth by other
customers is also a major source of brand awareness.
Aware of several brands, customers then process all the messages they are
exposed to—creating short-term memory or amplifying long-term memory—
and become attracted only to a short list of brands. This is the appeal phase.
Memorable brands—with wow factors—are more likely to enter and even go
higher on the short list. In highly competitive industries where brands are
abundant and products are commoditized (e.g., the consumer packaged goods
categories), brand appeal must be stronger. Some customers respond to brand
appeal more than others. Youth, for example, are usually among the first to
respond. That is why they are more likely to be early adopters of new
products.
Prompted by their curiosity, customers usually follow up by actively
researching the brands they are attracted to for more information from friends
and family, from the media, and/or directly from the brands. This is the ask
stage. Customers can either call friends for advice or evaluate the short list
themselves. When they decide to research some brands further, they might
search online product reviews. They might also contact call centers and talk
to sales agents for more information. They might also compare prices and
even try out products at stores. Today, the ask is further complicated by the
integration of the digital (online) and physical (offline) worlds. As customers
browse through products in-store, they might also search for information on
their mobiles. Since customers may go to multiple channels for more
information, companies need to have a presence at least in the most popular
channels.
At the ask stage, the customer path changes from individual to social.
Decisions will be made based on what customers take away from the
conversation with others. The brand appeal needs confirmation from others to
allow the path to continue. Brands need to trigger the right amount of
customer curiosity. When the curiosity level is too low, it means that the
brand appeal, although existent, is rather low. But when the curiosity level is
too high and customers are “forced” to ask too many questions, customers are
confused about the initial message they encounter.
If they are convinced by further information in the ask stage, customers will
decide to act. It is important to remember that the desired customer actions
are not limited to purchase actions. After purchasing a particular brand,
customers interact more deeply through consumption and usage as well as
post-purchase services. Brands need to engage customers and make sure that
their total ownership and usage experience is positive and memorable. When
customers have problems and complaints, brands need to pay attention and
make sure the customers receive solutions.
Over time, customers may develop a sense of strong loyalty to the brand, as
reflected in retention, repurchase, and ultimately advocacy to others. This is
the advocate stage. Active advocates spontaneously recommend brands they
love without being asked. They tell positive stories to others and become
evangelists. But most loyal advocates are passive and dormant. They need to
be prompted by either a query or a negative advocacy. When they do
encounter such a prompt, they feel obliged to recommend and defend the
brands they love. Since loyal advocates take risks to recommend certain
brands, they are also more likely to buy more of those brands in the future.
(See Figure 5.2.)
 Figure 5.2 Mapping the Customer Path throughout the Five A's
The stages in the five A's are not always straightforward and are sometimes
even spiral, similar to the way women buy. With attention deficit, customers
might skip a certain phase along the customer path. For instance, a customer
might not be attracted to a brand at first, but a recommendation from a friend
drives the customer to eventually purchase the brand. It means that the
customer skips appeal and goes directly from aware to ask. On the other
hand, it is also possible that some customers skip ask and impulsively act
solely based on the initial awareness and appeal.
In other cases (e.g., in scarce and highly popular categories), loyal advocates
might not necessarily be actual buyers. Tesla products, for example, are well
advocated by non-buyers. This means that customers skip act and go directly
to advocate. The new customer path is not necessarily a fixed customer
funnel, and customers do not necessarily go through all the five A's. Thus,
from aware to advocate, the path might expand or narrow in terms of the
number of customers going through each stage.
The new customer path might also be a spiral, in which customers return to
previous stages, creating a feedback loop. A customer who asks questions
might add new brands to the “awareness list” or find a particular brand much
more appealing. A customer who encounters product issues during usage
might research more about the product before deciding whether to keep using
it or to switch to another. Since the path might be a spiral, the number of
brands considered throughout the customer path might also fluctuate across
the five A's.
The time customers spend on their path to purchase also varies across
industry categories depending on the perceived importance of the categories.
In consumer goods categories, for example, aware and appeal occur almost
simultaneously. Thus, strong brand awareness without equally strong brand
appeal in those categories usually leads to nothing. The time spent on ask is
also typically very short. Spontaneous discovery is very common. Customers
instantly and impulsively decide which brands to choose as they stroll down
the grocery aisles. Most customers catch only a glimpse of each considered
brand in-store and typically do not research further. For big-ticket items such
as real estate and cars, on the other hand, customers are willing to spend more
time asking questions and doing extensive research before purchasing the
items.
The five A's framework is a flexible tool that is applicable to all industries.
When used to describe customer behavior, it draws a picture that is closer to
the actual customer path. It allows for cross-industry comparisons, which
reveal insights into industry characteristics. It also provides insights into a
company's relationship with customers in comparison with its competitors.
When a company, for example, finds that the most common path its
customers often take is very different from the typical customer path in its
industry, the company might discover either an authentic differentiation or a
hidden customer experience problem.
Driving from Awareness to Advocacy: The O Zone (O3)
The ultimate goal of Marketing 4.0 is to drive customers from awareness to
advocacy. In general, there are three main sources of influence marketers can
use to do so. A customer's decisions across the five A's are usually influenced
by a combination of their own influence, others' influence, and outer
influence. Let us call them the O Zone (O3). (See Figure 5.3.)

Figure 5.3 The O Zone of Driving Customers from Awareness to

Advocacy
The outer influence comes from external sources. It is purposely initiated by
brands through advertising and other marketing communications. It may also
come from other customer interfaces such as sales force and customer service
staff. From a brand's standpoint, outer influence is still manageable and
controllable. The message, the media, and the frequency can be planned. The
overall customer touchpoints can be designed, although the resulting
customer perceptions may still vary depending on how satisfactory the
experience is.
Similarly, others' influence also comes from the external environment.
Typically, it comes from a close circle of friends and family as word of
mouth. Others' influence can also come from a broader but independent
community to which customers belong. For example, customers may be
influenced by conversations they heard on social networking platforms.
Customers may also be influenced by communal rating systems such as
TripAdvisor and Yelp. Not all sources of others' influence are equal. Among
many segments, the youth, women, and netizens (YWN) are the most
influential. Others' influence coming from them is often the major driver of
purchase.
Despite a brand's effort, it is essentially difficult to manage and control the
outcome of others' influence. The only way for a brand to do so is through
community marketing. Companies cannot directly control the conversation
within the community, but they may facilitate discussion with the help of
loyal customers.
On the other hand, own influence comes from within oneself. It is a result of
past experience and interaction with several brands, personal judgment and
evaluation of the brands, and ultimately individual preference toward the
chosen brand(s). Often, personal preference (own) is swayed toward certain
brands by word of mouth (others') and advertising (outer). Indeed, the three
major sources of influence are always intertwined.
Outer influence often reaches customers first. If a brand successfully triggers
conversation with Outer influence, it is usually followed by others' influence.
Ultimately, the way these two sources of influence interact will shape
customers' own influence.
Any particular customer is usually influenced by all three types, albeit with
different proportions. Some customers have stronger personal preferences
and are not influenced too much by an advertisement or a friend's
recommendation. Some rely heavily on the recommendation of others, and
some believe in the advertisers. Despite individual variations, today's
customers rely more on others' influence than their own and outer influence
for reasons we have already discussed. Research by Nielsen in 2015 reveals
that 83 percent of respondents in 60 countries rely on friends and family as
the most trusted source of “advertising,” and 66 percent pay attention to the
opinions of others posted online.
Across the five A's, customers are most open to influence during the ask and
act stages. In ask, customers seek advice and absorb as much information as
possible from others' and outer influence with regard to a short list of brands.
The ask stage serves as a window of opportunity for marketers to increase
brand favorability. In act, customers shape their own perception of brands
over time. Since they are no longer wary of outer pressure to buy at this
stage, they have an open mindset. Brands that offer stronger customer
experience during consumption and usage will be the preferred brands. (See
Figure 5.4.)

Figure 5.4 The O Zone across the Customer Path

The level of experience that customers have also determines their customer
path. First-time buyers of a product category typically go through the entire
five A's and rely a lot on outer influence. Thus, many first-time buyers end
up buying brands with the highest share of voice.
As they become more experienced after a few rounds of purchase, they rely
more on others', sometimes skip the appeal stage, and perhaps switch brands.
The most experienced customers usually have stronger own influence. When
they have finally found their favorite brands, they will skip most stages in the
five A's and continue to use the brands perpetually until the brands disappoint
them.
The O3 is another tool that helps marketers to optimize their marketing
efforts. When marketers manage to identify the importance of outer, others',
and own influence, they will be able to decide which activities to focus on.
When outer influence is more important than the rest, marketers can focus
more on marketing communications activities. On the other hand, when
others' influence is the most important, marketers should rely on community
marketing activities. But when own influence is the most important,
marketers should put more emphasis on building the post-purchase customer
experience.
Summary: Aware, Appeal, Ask, Act, and Advocate
In the digital economy, customer path should be redefined as the five A's
—aware, appeal, ask, act, and advocate—which reflect the connectivity
among customers. The concept of Marketing 4.0 ultimately aims to drive
customers from awareness to advocacy. In doing so, marketers should
leverage three main sources of influence—own, others', and outer influence.
This is what we call the O Zone (O3), a useful tool that can help marketers
optimize their marketing efforts.
Reflection Questions
How can your brand identify and leverage the most critical
touchpoints in the customer path?
How can your business improve brand favorability and optimize
marketing efforts by evaluating the three main sources of influence
across the customer path?